Life Is A Highway

  Life is a highway, by golly, yes, it is!  But it's also a sunny suburban avenue, a busy city boulevard and a scary,overgrown, one lane country road where branches screech and scrape against your car as you pass. The road of life is one we ALL have to travel but THIS redhead prefers the lure of the four-lane almost anytime! :-)

WHAT ROAD ARE YOU ON?

One of my favorite songs of all time is "Life is a highway", sung by Tom Cochrane.  (I've included it at the end of the blog for you!)   Anyhoo, I'm bringing it up for a couple of reasons; it seems like today is the day for all kinds of folks  heading off in new directions!  My granddaughter, Molly, is starting 1st grade today!  My friend Samantha's  three are off as well.  Poor Samantha;  no more "baby" at home and oh boy, the oldest is in JUNIOR HIGH! Talk about a Mom who is looking down a whole new road! 

 Another good friend of mine has spent the entire summer on pins and needles wondering if she was going to get the job transfer that she put in for in April.  Sure, it means that her and her daughter would have to pick up and move back across the country to where they originally came from 4 yrs. ago AND leave her 20 yr. old son here... but hey, Life is a highway, right?  But all summer it's been no news and no news and no news and then at the last possible minute... nope, sorry, don't need you.  All of the planning- up in smoke.  All of the excitement - popped like a balloon.  And so it goes...

" Life is a road you travel on, when there's one day here and the next day gone.              Sometimes you bend and sometimes you stand,  Sometimes you turn your back to the wind."

I grew up a trucker's daughter.  My Dad drove for a living.  When I was little he drove Charter Bus; he was the driver for the Harlem Globetrotters for a while!  I have postcards that he sent me when I  was a child from all over the country.  Then, when I was in 4th grade he became a truck driver, eventually buying two rigs and becoming an owner-operator.  All thru Junior High and High School I was able to go along with him on weekends, and school vacations.  We would play all kinds of pranks on each other and each year we would have a special weekend where we would leave early on a job to Murfreesborough, TN. and make a  day stop at what was then the Grand Ole' Opry Amusement Park.  He would do it with my Mom, then my sister and then me.  Mile after mile would roll under us, IL, IN, KY, TN, and so on.  My Dad would talk and talk, sharing stories of his life until I would fall asleep in my seat and he would make me crawl into the sleeper to  peacefully dream away knowing that his strong hands were holding tightly onto that steering wheel until the next stop.  To this day I can't resist truck stop food! LOL  My Dad logged over 4 million safe miles before he retired.  FOUR MILLION.  Blows my mind. 

"Through all these cities and all the towns, it's in my blood and it's all around.                     I love you now like I loved you then. This is the road and these are the hands..."

But what happens when you get knocked off of that safe, comfortable, familiar road?  When the smooth highway you've been traveling down becomes that scary, dark, overgrown and unknown  road? Or worse yet, when the road dang near disappears and you're up against a mountain on one side and a drop-off on the other?  How do you keep on driving, moving forward, surviving the trip?  I get asked that question all of the time.  Some of you have been wondering how I went from Pastor to quilter, how I deal with my illness, and "What is UP with the Just Hatched thing, anyway?"  Today  just seemed like a good day to tackle those questions and  "Life is a Highway" is a great way for me to answer! 

IN THE PROVERBIAL NUTSHELL

    Me, 1990's, living in Arizona,  2 kids, working as a full-time pastor of an inter-denominational church (whoo-whee what fun!)  Life was great...then the little creeping ailments of my childhood and teen-aged years started YELLING instead of showing up as the occasional loud whisper and after several years of diagnostic hell I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease.

Chick's Interuppted Buttons on Zazzle

For those of you who are not familiar with this lovely condition, just think of it as rust on your digestive tract... yup, not fun.  Now let's fast-forward to 10 yrs. later where I'm retired from full-time ministry,  in a new relationship, in Illinois and with a few other auto-immune diseases to boot!  Seems that if you have one the others like to join the party!   Well, I will be honest and tell you that I was plenty upset with THE Man Upstairs for a very long while... and it was thru the company and prayers of the man who would become "The Hubs" and some steadfast friends that I found my way back to a good road again, but Lordy, let me tell you...the Survival Highway is a road hard traveled.

"There's no load, I can't hold, Road so rough this I know,
I'll be there when the light comes in... tell 'em we're survivors."

Soooo, what now?  Well, I have been sewing since I was five years old.  I put myself through college designing and sewing formal wear;  there's lots of custom wedding dresses under these fingers! LOL  Then my art background blended with the sewing and I started making church banners and  the altar cloths which are known as paraments.  Then I started helping a friend in her fabric/Quilt store... then I made a cancer quilt for a friend.  Then two. Three. All of that was in the background until  THAT ONE DAY!  It was a VERY bad day, it was even STORMING outside it was so bad! (It really was, I swear!)    I was with my bible study group, Bible Babechicks , and had been grousing about "poor me, now what?".  Well, that night's study topic talked about folks who needed to start a whole new life.  (FUNNY, LORD... HA, HA, HA!)  It spoke about leaving old garbage behind and growing something new. (LA, LA, LA, I sang, with my fingers in my ears) because the Lord does NOT leave you stranded... (which I firmly believed but only for OTHERS, it seemed.).  And the Scripture verse that it was built around  was 2 Corinthians 5:17

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"

This meant to me that if I was REALLY going to live my life in the faith that I professed I needed to dump that old attitude and look and see what God had ready for me to do!  (OK... so now get ready to laugh)  .... this little bible study group was taking place in a SEWING ROOM!!   

   I am a member of several Christian groups in the Chicago area so ministry is NEVER gone...and one of the things I share on a regular basis is what I like to call my  "Holy Spirit 2 x 4 moments".  That would be the times when I am being so dense that the Holy Spirit has to get my attention by symbolically whacking me upside the head!  That sewing room moment?  Yeah, a BIGGO 2x4 upside the head!   LOL  It was SO THERE... down to an illustration of a little chick coming out of it's shell!  Get it?  Babechick?  Just Hatched Babechick?  And so Just Hatched Productions was born in 2002.

       What do we do at JHP?  We have 3 main areas: Quilts, Embroidery and Church Textiles.  Our three websites vary a bit in what they cover: 

Just Hatched Productions  Our original website is currently undergoing a "re-hatching" but it contains our Baby blankets, Quilts, Church Banners and other religious embroidery art designs, Photo galleries and Custom Quilt Build(T-shirt, Photo and Memory) information areas.

 

Just Hatched Productions on ARTFIRE -   Our shop on ARTFIRE centers on our embroidered rag quilts, it also offers a wide selection of our embroidered center panels for quilters who want to add that special embroidered touch to their project!  Artfire is a great place for us because we have a photo gallery of projects that we've done and sold through this storefront and also custom projects that you can see!  It also offers a way for customers and artists to communicate if one would like a custom project made, allows for purchasing without having to "join" and here is where we can offer the largest variety of payment options!  All good things!  :-) 

JustHatchedQuilts   Is our ETSY storefront.  Please note that the name is a bit different and if you happen to go there on your own rather than thru a link on our sites that the name needs to be typed in without any spacing between the words.  Etsy wierdness.  :-)   Etsy is a bit more of a crafter's site and so while it carries the same quilts that our Artfire site has, we are loading many more embroidery squares to choose from here.  SO.... basically it's  ETSY= Embroidery & Quilts  and ARTFIRE = Quilts & Embroidery!!

Now,  WHAT kind of quilts do we do?   Our best known quilts are, of course, done in the country  styling known as "Rag Quilting".  Rag quilts have all the seams turned up towards the top and they gently fray like old blue jean hems throughout their lives as you wash them.  In other words, they just get more and more cuddle-y!  :-)   What makes OUR quilts stand out from all of the others is the fact that OURS have embroidery AND are all reversible!   When  most folks think about quilts they picture a really cool top design with all of the little pieces but when you turn the quilt over - one big old piece of fabric!  BORING!   At Just Hatched we make the back into an entirely new quilt!   It will either compliment the front design or be a duplicate - BUT it's done in flannel so the back is super soft and snuggle-y.  Two quilts in one!  However, we WILL make you a 'regular" quilt, if you insist!  :-)

 

Our other specialties are "T-shirt" and "Memory" quilts where photos, embroidery and clothing items are incorporated into a quilt or wall-hanging.  Again, we are a bit different from other quilting services that are out there; we like to embellish with custom embroidery designs and text, and we offer extensive photo services such as repair work on old photos, combining of multiple photos into one image and more.  If you'd like to see an example of one of our photo/scrapbook quilts please visit our YouTube channel at JHPQuilts  or click here to see And Then They Laughed - A Family Scrapbook Quilt

EMBROIDERY -  JHP has over 18,000 designs at our disposal... so trust me, we have something to fill your needs!  LOL  If we don't have it - I can digitize it!  I am also proud to say that we do portrait embroidery... yep, you have a photo of someone special?  I can, in most cases, make it into an embroidery design.  IN MOST CASES!  However, the images at this point are only done in B/W or vintage sepia.   JHP also offers custom logo design, etc.        (Photo /sewn digitized embroidery )

BANNERS - Does your faith family need a new banner?  At JHP we can make it!  We can even help you design a banner system to hang it in your sanctuary or to store them!!!   Is someone getting married? Baptized?  Confirmed?  Churches LOVE to receive new banners as gifts!   Brides and new Moms love to have their very own banners to commemorate the occasion.  We design banners of all sizes from 2 feet to 20!  ...and yes, we can duplicate a wedding invitation!  :-)   Click here to see a selection of JHP's  Just Hatched Productions Baptismal Banner Designs

BACK TO THAT HIGHWAY!

SO.... LIFE ... it is a heck of a highway!  Some of you '"met"  JHP at craft fairs over these past few years and we have loved meeting each and every one of you!   You may have noticed our absence this past year.  We've been on that scary country road for awhile.  Both of our Father's passed away from cancer, I was living part time in Arizona and part time here for 6  months while that was going on.  Since then the Hubs has had THREE knee replacements and twice I've had  nasty old rounds of pneumonia that wouldn't go away for 4 months.  We also had to say good bye to BOTH of our dogs.... all things which resulted in our working from home for the past year.  BUT it also resulted in a LOT of creativity coming to the forefront, the web-stores were expanded and OH MY, you should see the quilting studio!  Just Hatched continues to evolve; our banner area is back up and running after a bit of a hiatus and we are gearing up for a FULL FALL and HOLIDAY season of offerings on the websites!   If you are interested in a custom project please email me and let's put our heads together!  I can always be reached here or at [email protected].  The road twists and turns and we find ourselves back on that old FOUR LANE!!!   

THAT'S MY STORY AND I'M STICKIN' TO IT!

  I hope that explains this old Babechick's story a bit!  I am fortunate enough to have a wonderful HUBS who supports me and my ...ahem...hobby that grew into a whole lot of ROAD! 

 

    I am so very blessed to have met so many great folks on this road trip that I am on.  This blog, aptly named "Just Hatched, Just Thinking" is my way of sharing my stories; from the road, the studio, and from those great folks.   Like the song says: "Life is a highway, I want to ride it all night long.If you're going my way, I want to drive it all night long!" So jump on in, the motor's running! and we've got good tunes!  Who knows where we'll end up????   Pamela

Click here for road tunes!  :-)

Life is a highway